We are woken up this morning not by bird song but, and I think it’s for the first time, an absolute downpour of rain pummelling the tent. Ironically when it wakes me at 530 I feel like I may well have had my best (ok let’s call it the least worst) nights sleep since we started this whole camping malarkey.

Apart form the slightly weird self serve restaurant - you queue up at a small booth to get many menus (too easy to have just one) then you queue up again to order and then 20 minutes later there is a tannoy announcement calling out your name.....”Neeek”. I do feel that there might be a more efficient approach, particularly since she calls “Neeek” out seven times (one per dish....we were hungry!) and I have to walk eleventy billion miles each time to collect each individual dish. Anyway no complaints about the food itself and certainly none about the setting which is both beautiful and peaceful....

...as with all the camp sites we have stayed at there are lots of rules plastered everywhere. Thanks heavens that at this one they have finally cleared up the whole “do we, don’t we”  fish cleaning thing for us….phew....

Once we have sorted ourselves out in the morning we brew up under the shelter next to the wash block (a theme may be developing here!) and then head off...

We are of course out of Tuscany now but in spite of the rain the scenery still has plenty to offer....

Shortly after we see signs suggesting that our goal is now less than 100 kilometres away....

When I planned the route I mapped out lots of “points of interest” we could visit along the way. 

Unfortunately when you are tired anything that adds miles or climbing simply does not really feel like an option and so we have not visited all of them, or even most of them. Given today is our last big ride though before the finish I am determined to inject some culture into today. It’s not entirely successful if I am honest.!

We follow the sat nav into Capricana -Scalo and are greeted by the clock chiming as we arrive....

...unfortunately the sat nav seems less good at getting us out of Capricana - Scalo and we end up bouncing our bikes down a never ending set of treacherous steps.....

....it is pretty though....

When we finally release ourselves from the town we decide that perhaps we should give the next one (Sutri) a miss, so we do so simply taking a snap from afar.

Where I have put my foot down is that we will most definitely not just follow the main road into Rome and instead we will sweep up and through the Parco Naturale Regionale di Bracciano Martignano which skirts around the beautiful Lake Martignano. 

It really is lovely but as I stand up on the pedals to put some power into the first climb there is a loud “kerching” followed by some very unpleasant mechanical grinding noises. 

A quick inspection reveals that after 1200 miles my rear wheel has snapped a spoke and wrapped itself around the disc brake, but worse the wheel also now has a distinctly banana like quality to it.....this is not good.

We remove the offending spoke and have a quick conflab about what to do.....given there is no repair we have the tools to make and that it’s Sunday and we are in the middle of nowhere, the only answer is to press on, very, very carefully. 

Three miles later another loud “kerching” indicates that another spoke has given up its struggle and the wheel has now taken on a really wild shimmy. Its very clear that without drastic intervention this wheel is simply not going to last the remaining 30 miles we still have to do today to get to Rome. All kinds of thoughts race through my mind not least that I feel very very sick....surely this is not the end...not now, not so close?

There is another three men and a tent pow pow and we all agree that we cannot carry on as is....instead my two heroic colleagues agree (in fact they don’t “agree” they simply state it as a fact) that if my wheel has any chance of making it to Rome we need to get the weight off it and so without hesitation they each strap one of my panniers to their already overloaded bikes.

The next 30 miles are some of the most nerve wracking I have ever had on a bike as we each (with the extra weight there is a very real chance Marc and Dans bikes will simply give up and say “meh....I can’t do it” as well) gingerly and gently roll our way through the countryside. Every pothole (and as previously mentioned there are MILLIONS!) every climb, every sudden stop is a potentially wheel ending event. I spend the next three hours eyes peeled scanning the road ahead and counting down every 0.1 miles on the Garmin.

Ever so slowly (painfully slowly) the scenery changes and it’s clear we are no longer in the countryside, we are back in the outskirts of a city, and that city is ....Rome!

We have the usual end of day Garmin nonsense where we seem to go around and around in ever decreasing circles until eventually we trip over the campsite, but we have made it.... we have literally limped into the outskirts of Rome and it really is a massive relief. 

We now have less than 20 miles tomorrow to get to the Trevi Fountain and throw our pennies in…...we are going to make it. This really is the most insane thing we have ever done….and it is actually going to happen…we are going to do it!